Education of democratic citizenship in Canada

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УДК 37.015.31: 316.42 (71)

EDUCATION OF DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP IN CANADA

VOLODYMYR POGREBNYAK (Poltava)

The pedagogical analysis of development of methodological and theoretical principles of education of democratic citizenship in Canada in the middle 1900s - the 20th century is carried out. The modern system of citizen education is characterized as means of development of democratic state and realization of socio-economic, educational and elucidative policy in this country.

Keywords: civil education, structure of democratic citizenship, civil, political and social rights, cultural literacy.

Проведено педагогічний аналіз становлення і розвитку виховання демократичної громадянськості в Канаді. Громадянське виховання розкрито як засіб розбудови демократичної держави й утілення соціально-економічної і культурно-просвітницької політики в країні.

Ключові слова: громадянське виховання, структура демократичної громадянськості, цивільні, політичні та соціальні права, культурна грамотність.

Проведён педагогический анализ становления и развития воспитания демократической гражданственности в Канаде. Гражданское воспитание раскрыто как средство формирования демократического государства и воплощения социально-экономической и культурно-просветительской политики в стране.

Ключевые слова: гражданское воспитание, структура демократической гражданственности, гражданские, политические и социальные права, культурная грамотность.

citizen education democratic сanada

Forming the youth democratic citizenship and the activation of participating in state creative and social processes are the significant targets of social education nowadays. The importance and the priority of these pedagogical tendencies are accentuated in the National Patriotic Education Programme, National Doctrine of Development of Education in Ukraine, National Strategy of Education Development in Ukraine for 2012-2021 years, Education and Higher Education Acts of Ukraine, other educational documents.

The substantial contribution to studying the philosophic, methodological-and- theoretical and methodical principles of individual civic strains cultivation, forming them under the conditions of national and foreign comprehensive and high school has been made by N. Abashkina, A. Aleksiuk, R. Alejandro, J. Alfiorov, P. Clark, O. Dzhurynsky, М. Edwards, J. Gaventa, D. Heater, N. Lavrychenko, M. Leshchenko, Z. Malkova, B. Melnychenko, L. Pukhovska, О. Sukhomlynska, К. Tailor, I. Vasylenko, N. Voskresenska, B. Wolfson and other scientists.

In the context of world integration processes, European choice and building up the Ukrainian state system the civil education grows in urgency in the practice of national higher pedagogical educational establishments, inasmuch as the realization of democratic principles in comprehensive school educational process under conditions of Ukrainian society renovation and civic activity rise requires the realization of appropriate teacher vocational training.

At the same time, from our viewpoint, the system of purposive teachers-to-be vocational training at national higher pedagogical educational establishments, which is targeted to make teachers-to-be ready to realize the civil education targets within the comprehensive school activity, is on the development stage now.

First of all, this system functioning requires the appropriate scientific and methodical guidance founded on taking account of national and foreign progress in this sphere, but for all that organizing and educational conditions and methodical facilities of teachers-to-be training for accomplishing the pupils civil education are elaborated in detail in pedagogical study, educational and teaching practice in foreign countries which have passed a long process of conception, establishment and development of democratic society and school. At the same time, unfortunately not many researches of M. Guriy, T. Lihnevska, J. Toporkova, M. Shabinsky, I. Vasylenko and O. Zakharova are dedicated to investigating the youth civil education in Ukraine. Therefore, in the context of previously mentioned problems it was decided to carry out the pedagogical analysis of civil education development in Canada to ascertain its methodological and theoretical principles as means of democratic state development and realization of socio-economic, cultural and educational policy.

Nowadays the significance of democratic citizenship education is determined not only by positive influence of its high organization level upon the political situation or government activity on the whole, but specifically by its influence upon providing with civic responsibility and activity, realization of processes of intra-social and international co-operation and unity. In spite of the fact that civil education always was in the highlight of teaching science and practice, all these aspects, unfortunately, didn't find an appropriate reflection in educational and teaching process. Traditionally the problem of citizen education was imposed on family, school and church, but above all forming youth tolerance, obedience and duty devotion, which were taken up as the main forming components of responsible citizenship, were considered to be their key target. In light of the latest social processes the adequacy of this approach to the civil education nowadays gives the raise to doubts and is a controversial one from our point of view.

The idea of citizenship is historically based on conception of participating in common life of homogeneous group in civilized manner and contacted with implementation of functions, which provide its vital tasks and survival optimally. At the same time modern complication of economic connections and productive processes, development of the newest transport and communication facilities have resulted in integration and globalization, the comprehensive deep contacts between the most various cultural groups worldwide. Thus the development of citizenry cultural variety and increasing of countries interdependence result in necessity of development of new approaches to definition of citizenship phenomenon while the civil education itself requires the renewal of methodological-and-theoretical and methodical principles in accordance with modern sociocultural situation.

From the beginning of the 19th century the belief that democratic government is in charge of education of citizen who are the source and, to a certain extent, a legislative, social, economic, political and cultural regulator in the country has been disseminated in Canada. In 1848 E. Ryerson said that ``public education and public liberty stand or fall together" [15, p. 296].

Thenceforth national education in Canada is considered to be means of national membership feeling rise and the province governments are responsible for it. The civil education is correlated with forming devotion to (British) Crown, Canada, separate province and local community. Along with state system development and formation of nation, the basic accents of citizen education have been gradually displaced from the completely passive liking for abstract ideas and recognition of community to activation of the energetic participating in social life of the democratic country.

In view of the above said to the middle of the 20th century the citizenship in Canada has been gradually formed as a conception which could not be interpreted only as legal, officially recognized in the country status with appropriate consequences. Nowadays this concept is determined as four leading compile parts: civil, correlating with rights necessary for providing fundamental individual freedoms; political which assumes a right to participate in political activity; social, related to the right on economic prosperity and personal safety; moral, that represents general public ideas about "a good citizen'' [14, p. 389].

Thus the civil education as the pedagogical phenomenon is considered by the educators of Canada in the aggregate of civil, political and social rights, their understanding and accepting duty and responsibility for active participating in the democratic governing the country. Except it, the different approaches to its realization expect embodiment of such aspects of democratic citizenship as development of critical attitude and necessity in active voice in social life, and also mastering main information from national history and geography, or forming ''cultural literacy". These spheres of democratic citizenship are consistently realized in educational establishments of Canada with beginning from preschool; the special attention is paid to elucidative activity with adult population, first of all with immigrants, in the system of lifelong education [10, p. 4].

The increasing of attention to the problems of democracy and civil society brought to the variety of approaches to interpretation of essence and components of the democratic citizenship in different social groups and teaching process in separate regions of Canada [17, p. 8]. So the active theoretical searches for achieving the integrated vision of citizenship nature and improvement of civil education methods are carried out. For the reason of ensuring the unity of different institutions energies and helping in coordinating the federal and provincial initiatives in this field the Canadian Association for the Social Studies - CASS - has founded the Committee for Effective Canadian Citizenship Education. The Faculty of Education of the University of New Brunswick studies its distinguishing conceptions and different aspects which were offered by Canadian and foreign educators with a view to form the one methodological and theoretical approach and to elaborate the methodical principles of realization of civil education in educational and teaching process in comprehensive and high school and in the system of postgraduate and lifelong education on that basis [10, pp. 5-6]. The investigations with a view to detect the main methodological approaches, theoretical principles and methodical basis of realizing civil education which are similar to the aforesaid and common in pedagogical researches of many scientists are carried on by A. Sears at University of British Columbia [17].

Thus the integration of scientific views on the civil education in Canada makes it possible to consider this pedagogical phenomenon to consist of the aggregate of such forming components as: mastering main information from Canadian history, geography, culture and other social studies; the development of critical but still responsible civic position, skills and habits of participating in social life; forming of respect and desire to protect nature and environment and take care of them; understanding of own mission and peculiarities of international relations in multicultural environment.

Now let us to cast a light on illustrating of specific character of interpreting and embodiment of these forming components in scientific-research and elucidative activity of Canadian scientists and educational institutions.

In Canada the components of civil education traditionally embodied as an added feature in course of studying history, geography in part and social studies in the course of time. So in Ontario province the essence of these subjects in 1961 was formulated by Ontario Social Sciences Study Committee which pointed to the fact that “schools tended to treat history as “a body of knowledge that must be acquired by anybody who is to become a good citizen”, but at the same time “in view of the complexity of world problems, simply learning facts was not enough” [13, p. 88]. The Committee announced: “If we are thinking of producing responsible democratic citizens, students should be able to read currently available information and discuss it sceptically, and with some notion of the value of evidence, some notion of relevance and irrelevance, and some discrimination between facts and prejudices ... without some ability of this sort, they cannot pull their weight in the democratic process” [13, p. 89].

In 1967 the Canadian association "National History Project" recognized that in general over the time of studying the historical disciplines Canadian pupils and students do not come up to the required level of civil self-inquiring, the appropriate social skills and habits and that studying of history differs cardinally and critically in French-speaking Quebec and English-speaking provinces [6, p. 24]; moreover all extant historical education models have less common features with the life of youth who masters them [6, p. 32].

In spite of the fact that the orientation and substance of courses in history in Canada have met with the material changes since the beginning of the 20th century, they are not without criticism now. It is important to note that there is no general approach to Canadian history interpretation; in accordance with it in separate provinces it is elucidated in different textbooks and manuals on basis of different methodological and theoretical positions. In addition the history as a subject is not considered to be a basis and principal mean of the civil education; it is one of the forming components of social studies which are characterized by different degree of orientation to the forming of citizenship. On this occasion J. Grant says that unfortunately in the accomplishment of the civil education “the teaching of social studies in Canada has tended to be pretty haphazard and probably not very well done” [5, p. 49].

In accordance with civilizational tendencies of information-oriented society the Canadian government lays down the priority attention to raising the scientific, technological, engineering, business education and computer knowledge as an essential prerequisite to the development of national economics. At the same time the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) accentuates on the thing that the importance and necessity of social investigations and civil education should not be underestimated. In the report presented to parliamentary committee in 1988 the Association proved the necessity of activation of the development of humanities and social sciences and showed their importance for understanding the influence of cultural and social factors on engineering process improvement. The Association came to a conclusion that except of economic and polytechnical education Canadians “must also know themselves - their history, literature, philosophy - if they are to have the self-confidence to compete as an equal player in the world economy” [2, p. 7].

More than three decades ago (1975) the Commission on Canadian Studies headed by T. Symons analysed the state of affairs in this sphere in comprehensive and higher educational establishments and made a proposal to determine the demands and quality standards which should be achieved by the graduates in understanding of political system, government and civil society [20]. But in 1992 the scientist pointed out again that “the knowledge base ... necessary if citizenship is going to have any meaning, remains inadequate, and that it is “ghettoized” by being taught in isolation, rather than pervasively, throughout the curricula” [19, p. 60]. Moreover according to the results of special research more than four and a half million Canadian adults are recognized to be functionally uneducated in the field of civil education; in accordance with it such lack of education remains the principal barrier to the development of individual cultural literacy for democratic society development worldwide [10, p. 11].

Thus, inasmuch as the valid democracy demands active citizen participation in making socially necessary resolves, forming of functional education and civil competence are the principal terms of this participation realization. According to the definition given by UNESCO the functional civil education makes modern democracy possible, it “empowers the individual both in the psychological and the social sense, and ... sharpens consciousness, creates discontent with the unacceptable, and adds potential to individual capacity for participation” [1, pp. 7-8, 13-14].

In turn the valuables of the democratic world view are “engaged in a shared search for the common good, and ... cooperate in trying to achieve it. It requires values, not just of cooperation, but of mutual respect and tolerance for fellow participants” [12, p. 214]. From a point of view of J. Kidd, unfortunately, the evaluative component of citizenship moral aspect is frequently ignored: it reveals itself in superficial signs, for example, in symbolism, appeals and discussions it is often adverted to on the election eve; but morality “turns the concept of citizenship into an ideal of justice and duty against which the achievements of people can be measured and towards which aspirations can be directed” [8, p. 389].

Hence the development of responsible citizenship provides not so much for execution of formal assumptions as, for instance, participation in election process, as for rise of conscientious attitude, respect and support in formation of social democratic civic valuables and readiness to assert them.

Ontario Social Sciences Study Committee drew attention to the fact that responsible citizenship education is directed to formation of youth conscientious attitude to the democratic social valuables and appropriate behaviour principles. “Social studies were to promote the development among students of consideration for others, willingness to accept responsibility and to work with others ..., attitudes of helpfulness and loyalty to friends, home, school and community and, in general, of qualities that enable the individual “to be a good citizen”. Co-operation in a democratic group requires self-control, intelligent self-direction, and the ability to accept responsibility” [4, p. 90].

Canadian educational establishments take these principles into account and insert the problems of civil education in their teaching and educational syllabuses. Canadian School Boards Association declares that “personal and social skills that promote self-esteem, individual responsibility and respect for others should be taught. Graduates should be able to make moral and ethical decisions” [9, p. 6]. In accordance with this declaration the principle civil education valuables should be “tolerance, cooperation, fair play, moderation, rationality and critical thought” [11, p. 77]. Likewise it in Alberta province the object of citizen education is determined as “development of desirable personal characteristics such as integrity, honesty, fairness, generosity, self-esteem, respect for others, responsibility for one's actions, a sense of justice, tolerance, open-mindedness, respect for the environment, sharing, stewardship, and cooperation” [18, p. 17].

It affirms that under the modern circumstances the concept of high morality and ethical problems are frequently connected with a matter of environmental preservation and protection at the rate of region, country and world scale. Thus the confidence in the necessity of nature protection is considered to be a forming component of the established democratic citizenship. According to the passed by the Canadian government “Green Plan” which declares that the society is in charge of the environmental preservation and protection, the necessity of bringing up the sensitivity to environmental problems in the educational establishments was established. A responsible citizen has to be not only well-informed scientifically on the essence of environmental problems, but be able to form a correct estimate conversationally, to think “scientifically, philosophically, morally, historically, and aesthetically” [7, p. 174].

In view of these demands and tendencies B. Chisholm, an outstanding public figure and enlightener, a Head of Worldwide Health Protection Organization, made a suggestion to extend educational content by integration of universal approach to educational process implementation, mainly to supply youth familiarization with the principal world social development systems. From the viewpoint of the researcher, “existing barriers in people's minds to world co-operation and peace are the inevitable result of the learning process to which almost all the world's children are subjected and that it should be possible to develop a system of education which will not produce these barriers” [3, p. 13].

At the close of the 20th century the civil education in Canada keeps on concentrating about the local, provincial and national perspectives, notwithstanding the world growth in integration and interdependence. G. & P. Schuyler pay attention to this deficiency: “Canada's complex relationship with the rest of the world should be reflected in education that prepares Canadians to be world citizens, to participate effectively in political and economic processes and to understand and influence public policy whether we are talking about energy, free trade, agriculture, or the environment, in Canada or abroad” [16, p. 162].

The conducted research allows to draw conclusion that civil education in pedagogical science of Canada is directed to learning civil, political and social rights, providing their understanding and accepting duty and responsibility for active participating in the democratic governing the country. This concept is determined as four leading compile parts: civil, correlating with rights necessary for providing fundamental individual freedoms; political which assumes a right to participate in political activity; social, related to the right on economic prosperity and personal safety; moral, that represents general public ideas about "a good citizen". Thus, civil education in Canada is the main condition and means of the democratic state development and realization of socio-economic, educational and elucidative policy in the country on principles of humanism, common respect and tolerance. In this connection the perspective direction of further research study is clarification of effective methodical aids of civil education, which are practically fulfilled in educational system of Canada.

References

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